Nobody's Fool (67 page)

Sully saw Clive Jr. emerge from Alice Gruber's house down the street and head toward them on foot, looking small and incongruous beneath the rows of giant black elms. When he saw who was waiting for him, his gait altered imperceptibly, as if registering that a bad thing had just gotten worse.

Which it had.

"Hi, dolly," Sully called to the woman.

In point of fact, she looked a lot older than the women Sully usually called "dolly," but she also looked like she could use some cheering up.

"Are you the tow truck?" the woman asked so miserably that Sully sensed melodrama.

"Am I a tow truck? No. Do I look like one?"

"My fiancee called ... a tow truck," she explained, her voice quavering.

Rub glared at her as he might have a mythical beast.

"Could you make that horrid man go away?" the woman begged, indicating Rub.

"Nope," Sully admitted.

"I've never been able to. You're welcome to try your luck, though." She looked away, up the street, hopelessly, in the direction of the Sans Souci.

"Hi, Clive," Sully grinned when Clive Jr.

arrived on the scene.

"Sully," Clive Jr. acknowledged. The woman on the steps had gotten to her feet when she saw Clive Jr. " but she stayed where she was by die porch. " I don't want to say anything," Sully told Clive Jr."

"but you appear to be up a stump." Clive Jr. looked at the deep tire tracks that began at the curb and stopped where the car perched. He sighed.

"It was an accident," he said.

"I figured you didn't park there on purpose," Sully said.

"It wasn't me," Clive Jr.

said.

"I was giving Joyce a driving lesson." Something like a sly smile played across Clive Jr. "s mouth. " I bet you were surprised to see her again. "

" Who? " Sully wondered. All three men turned to look at the grieving woman. " Joyce," Clive Jr. explained. " Joyce who? " Sully wanted to know. The smile, if it had been a smile, was gone now.

"My fiancee. You used to date her."

344 ensure it?

"With Donald," she explained, "I've always just left the door open." Ruth smiled her sad smile again.

"That's always been my strategy too," she admitted, looking up at the second story of Miss Beryl's house, as if she imagined Sully might be up there.

"My problem is, I can't stop watching the doorway and being disappointed," she explained, then looked over at her granddaughter again. Miss Beryl studied the child too, thinking, as she often had when she surveyed her eighth-grade classes, that maybe people did wear chains of their own forging, but often those chains were half complete before they'd added their own first heavy link. Maybe completing other people's work was the business of life.

"Let's go, squirt," Ruth said to the child, who did not respond until she was touched, and then she slid back onto the sofa and began to grope for Ruth's ear. Ruth gently removed the little girl's hand.

"We're going to see Mommy, and you can play with her ear all afternoon, okay? Give Grandma's ear a rest."

The child was staring at Miss Beryl again, almost smiling, it seemed.

"We know every bend in the road between here and the hospital, don't we, Tina?" Ruth said, taking the child's small hand.

"We go back and forth to Schuyler once a day at least."

"I thought about paying a visit," Miss Beryl said, "but my driving isn't what it used to be. The last time I went there I got lost."

Miss Beryl walked grandmother and granddaughter to the door and watched them retreat down the steps and get into Ruth's old car, which started up noisily and got even noisier when she shifted into reverse, put her foot on the gas and backed slowly, with an apologetic shrug for the noise, into Main Street.

Feeling distant from her extremities, her toes and fingertips tingling vaguely. Miss Beryl went into the bathroom and blew her nose hard, inspecting the tissue for blood. When there was none, she returned to her front room, where the telephone was ringing.

"Why don't I make us a big steaming pot of chicken noodle soup?" Mrs. Gruber said in lieu of hello.

It would take her another minute or two of inconsequential small talk before she'd get around to mentioning that she'd noticed a strange car in her friend's driveway. Instead of dropping her voice, she'd let the sentence hang, to signify her desire for a thorough, detailed explanation. It would be amusing. Miss Beryl thought to herself, to withhold that explanation awhile, "to watch her nosy friend suffer.

"Because I'm feeling better," she told Mrs. Gruber, which was true.

For when she picked up the phone, Miss Beryl noticed the corner of the jigsaw puzzle and saw that the piece she'd been looking for was no longer missing.

The child had found it, slipped it quietly into place, never said anything.

"Let's go someplace for lunch."

"Goody," said Mrs. Gruber.

"This is vintage Sully," Carl Roebuck said.

The two men were standing on the back porch of the Bowdon Street house.

Will, forgotten, stood off to one side. The weathered porch sloped furiously, the remnants of two-week-old snow having gathered in one corner where the sun didn't reach. Will looked past his grandfather at the gray, crooked house. He did not want to go inside. He was hoping his grandfather would not be able to get the door open. The house was all crooked and haunted-looking, and he knew that his mother, had she been there, would not have wanted him to go inside. Grandma Vera wouldn't have wanted it either, and when he thought of her he recalled a conversation he had overheard between her and Grandpa Ralph. In Grandma Vera's opinion it was dangerous for Will to accompany Grandpa Sully on his morning rounds. She didn't say why Grandpa Sully was dangerous, but Will, though his affection for the stranger of his two Bath grandfathers was growing daily, thought he understood why his grandmother was worried. Grandpa Sully took him up dark, smelly stairways in the back of buildings, and to places where there were wild dogs, and now to a house about to fall down. Some of Grandpa Sully's friends smelled bad, too. In his grandfather's company. Will found that he was often torn between opposing fears. He understood that getting too close to his grandfather was dangerous, especially if Grandpa Sully was wielding a hammer or, like now, a crowbar, or the long, sharp spatula he used in the restaurant to flip eggs. Even his father had warned him not to get too close to Grandpa Sully when he had any sort of tool in his hand, which was why Will had not even ventured up onto the porch when his grandfather started after the back door with his crowbar. The problem was that Will knew he didn't dare let his grandfather get out of sight either, sensing that if this happened he'd lose his grandfather's protection in a hostile environment. He knew Grandpa Sully was forgetful, entirely capable of forgetting Will altogether. In fact, he'd done it once already. One day last week they'd gone to the lumberyard outside of town, 34 and when they got inside, Grandpa Sully had stationed Will near the front door and told him to wait right there. Then he'd gone over and talked to the man behind the counter. After a few minutes the two men went out the side door and into the big yard where mountains of boards were stacked. Through the window Will had watched his grandfather and the man load a dozen or so boards onto the back of Grandpa Sully's truck and tie them in place with the rope. To the end of the boards the man had attached a red flag, which blew in the breeze. Will made a mental note to ask his grandfather what the flag was for. The two men outside shook hands then, and Grandpa Sully got back into the truck and drove off, the red flag waving good-bye around the corner.

Will then watched the hands of the big clock inch around the dial, forever it had seemed, until Grandpa Sully returned, going, it seemed to Will, dangerously fast, even in the parking lot. The truck came to a studding halt, pebbles rattling against the window through which Will stood peering, his eyes liquid. He was not actually crying, though, and he was proud of that. In fact, since returning to North Bath with his father he hadn't cried once, having resolved not to. He'd decided now that Wacker was gone that he'd try to be brave. When Grandpa Sully got out of the truck and headed inside, he was moving faster than Will had ever seen him go. He looked scared too, which made Will feel better, knowing that a man as fierce as Grandpa Sully could worry.

"I

bet you thought Grandpa'd forgotten all about you," he said. Will nodded. That was exactly the conclusion he'd come to, there was no denying it.

"Only for a minute," Grandpa Sully had explained.

Clearly, forgetting for such a short period of time didn't realty count as forgetting to his grandfather, who was used to forgetting things.

Will guessed, for a lot longer.

"Don't tell your grandmother," he warned when they were back in the truck and barreling down the road.

"And if your mother calls, don't tell her either." Will had promised he wouldn't.

"In fact," Sully had continued upon further reflection, "don't even tell your father." The boards loaded onto the back of Grandpa Sully's truck had come loose then and started tumbling off and bouncing along the blacktop, and Grandpa Sully had skidded over onto the shoulder and gotten out to retrieve them. Most of them fit onto the truck better now. From inside the cab. Will could hear his grandfather swearing at the boards and also at the drivers of the other cars on the road who had to swerve around both 347 the lumber and Grandpa Sully. But by the time his grandfather had collected the last of the boards and dropped them into the bed of the truck, he had calmed down some, and after he took a deep breath and got back into the truck, he'd looked over at Will and continued the instructions he'd been giving before all the boards fell out of the truck.

"In fact," he said "don't tell anybody." Will had kept his promise and not told a soul, but this present circumstance already reminded him of what had happened at the lumberyard, and Will sensed that this would be the beginning of something else that Grandpa Sully'd be instructing him not to tell anyone about. His grandfather was mad again and banging things and cursing, and the old house he was kicking looked like it would fall down for sure if he didn't stop. Or maybe it would wait until they were all inside and then fall down on them.

Or maybe they'd all go inside and he'd be told to wait someplace and Grandpa Sully and the other man would forget about him and drive off, and then it would fall down. Sully, who hadn't, as far as he knew, a key, was trying to force the rear door with a crowbar. The gray wood, its paint long ago stripped away, had grown soft and porous, which meant the crowbar wasn't working very well. So far. Sully had managed only to mutilate the door, which held fast.

"Who but Don Sullivan would use a crowbar to enter his own house?" Carl wondered out loud, stamping his feet in the cold.

"Stand back a second," Sully said, putting his weight against the bar. Like everything else about the house, the door hung crooked, and Sully had managed to create a space between the door and its frame, a space large enough to insert the flat end of the crowbar. When he levered himself against the bar, however, the steel simply sank deeper into the rotten wood.

"Why I should be surprised is another question," Carl continued.

"Your grandfather is a crowbar kind of guy. Will. He'd use a crowbar to remove the back of his wristwatch."

"I don't own a wristwatch," Sully reminded him.

"And if you don't shut up, I'm going to use this crowbar to remove you entirely." Carl leaned up against the porch railing, ignoring this threat like he did all of Sully's threats.

"What worries me is that just about the time you succeed in breaking in, the cops are going to arrive, charge us with burglary and throw our asses in jail."

"Me, maybe," Sully stood upright for a moment to catch his breath.

"I'm the one breaking and entering. As usual, you haven't done shit." Carl lit a cigarette, peeked in the kitchen window.

"Hey," he said.

"I just had a hell of an idea. You could move in here. " He inhaled deeply, then remembered he'd quit smoking and flicked the cigarette over the porch railing.

Sully was grinning at him. " You aren't going to make it, are you?

"

" You want these? " Carl said, offering Sully the pack of cigarettes. " Take 'em. " Sully took them, put the pack into his pocket. Carl looked surprised. Clearly, he'd intended the gesture to be symbolic and wouldn't have offered the cigarettes to Sully had he thought Sully might actually take them. It wasn't this actual pack of smokes he'd intended to give up but some future pack. He already missed this particular pack. " Those aren't even your brand," he pointed out. " I'll smoke them anyhow," Sully said. " I've gotten something for nothing from you about twice in the twenty years I've known you. "

" That's better than the nothing for something I always get when I hire you," Carl said. " Why don't you just break one of those small windowpanes and reach inside and unlock the door? "

" Because then I'd have to replace the glass," Sully said, stepping back and eyeing the door savagely. " Here. " Carl caught the crowbar. " Can this be? " he said in mock astonishment.

"Has Don Sullivan, Jack-Off, All Trades conceded that his trusty crowbar is not the precise tool for the task at hand?" Sully grinned at him, measured his distance to the door.